In a giant decision today, a federal district court judge has ruled against Microsoft, and told the software company it must stop selling the extremely popular Word word processing software in the United States.
The victor company, i4i, has only 30 employees but claims Microsoft violated a patent pertaining to Extensible Markup Language (XML). The judge agreed.
Microsoft has 60 days ... [ read the full article ]
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It's coming.. grass roots here.. every 10 fista upgrades these days I get 3 requests for something other than xp .. Depending on the system it's debian or mint .. odd lappy goes off with n00buntu core because of the wireless support and I'm downright lazy.. that's a 150% increase in 12 months.
Just upgraded my first win7 system today.. went off running sabayon like a star.. unlike the "from the shop" win7 that had no working sound and seemed to be full of drm and bad drivers... everything working a treat... quad core with 4 gigs of ram.. cakky nvidia graphics.. don't get much for £700 in the UK when you take win7 into account.. still not as fast as my dual 64 lenny tho but I couldn't be bothered trying to get it all working when sab64 just went on and worked.. Guess they will be impressed when they see all the freeeeeeee and legal software it comes with.. open office is a winner.. with lots of other cool stuff and some jaw dropping games.
I'm starting to take real work away from the 3 M$ affiliated shops in town now.. roll on win7 and drm.. more work and cash in my pocket XD
Try as I might, I simply can't bring myself to care. It'll get settles. Iv'e been running a torrent version of 2003 for ages anyway. IT'S A WORD PROCESSOR. I mean really? Really?
First off, all a patent means is....you got to aquire rights for something before someone else did. Who knows how many individuals or companies had a custom XLM style of programming, but failed to aquire a patent for it before this I4I company? And how many companies and programmers today use a custom XLM set for profitable use? The answer....over 20,000,000,000! So why is it that this no-name backwater company is only going after M$? Money! Plain and simple. And believe me, I don't hate M$, and you certainly won't see me cheering for them either. I just hate to see people taking advantage of a blatently obvious money grab, and getting away with it. It's all to similar to the copyright infringment everyday people are victims of over copying a cd they bought multiple times. The big movie companies were found to be doing the same thing with dvd movies, yet who got hurt? Not the big guys...just us little guys. And believe me, allowing this type of suit to ensue will only encourage others to do the same, which will lead to product price increases, and major changes and loads of space consuming patches. Again, it's the little guy who will get hurt. I guess if the ruling stands, everyone who uses the Word 2003 thru 2007 app is guilty of patent infringment?
First off how general is the "customized xml" category cover?
And then the question, does anyone who uses customized xml infringe on this patent? If so this patent is bogus. I can understand patenting a paticular version of customized xml but not ALL.
I think I might patent "customized software" and sue everyone.
Originally posted by bam431: Why doesn't Microsoft just buy them
another person who thinks a global M$ software monopoly is a good thing.. big brother is watching you.. trouble is.. we are legion XD
Why didn't the judge order all existing instances of this infringing software being removed also within 60 days? Theres a puzzle.. just because people have bought something which the seller didn't have rights to doesn't apparently mean they have the right to keep using it. A patch update should be released immediately removing word from all existing M$ office installations... or it's a nonsense
(amazon vs Orwell and kinders.. aren't they chocolate eggs with crappy choke your kids bits of plastic inside?)
Sorry i Forgot that people Don't recognize sarcasm over the internet next time I'll remember to use my sarcasm tags <sarcasm>Why doesn't Microsoft just buy them</sarcasm>
I use XML very often for custom data and configuration files. Each time one tends to invent a new XML schema to fit the business domain of interest, a simple example being the <sarcasm>xxx</sarcasm> mentioned above. I actually can't think what NON-customised XML refers to - it's always customised!
